by Jim Melvin
Other than a few hundred vultures and rats, there was less evidence of scavenging than was typical in the untended aftermath of such a huge and bloody battle. Deva reasoned that the lingering scent of the black mountain wolves might be scaring other animals away.
The bodies of the soldiers, which included newborns, Jivitans, and even a few scattered Nissayans, were already bloating within the cramped confines of their armor. Grotesque portions of their faces protruded from the slits in their helms. The cool weather had slowed down the rotting process, but a good deal of damage had already been done.
Deva’s mind contained a maelstrom of emotion. In some regards he felt like dancing and laughing, so great was the sensation of relief since being released from the torment of the chain. But a larger part of him felt like sitting down and sobbing, so great was the horror of his memories. Deva remembered everything he had done as Mala: murder, cruelty, and perversion beyond measure. Yet worst of all had been witnessing the death of Yama-Utu.
If not for the sheer joy of freedom, Deva would have taken his own life at that moment. Instead, he made the decision to return to Okkanti, and there, among the Himamahaakaayo, attempt to find healing. Never again would he leave the blessed peaks. His days of wandering were over.
Deva stood beside the tree and ran his fingertips along its smooth bark. The tree was barely his height. Two branches sprang out from the trunk, each bearing a single leaf. Deva wiped tears from his eyes with his remaining hand.
The tang of the Silver Sword protruded from the front of the trunk at about the level of his knee. Deva knelt and examined it. Sap the color of blood oozed from the bark where it had been pierced. Deva peered around the back of the tree. Less than a finger-length of the blade protruded through the back side. Sap also dripped from this wound.
Now Deva was sobbing.
“I have felt such pain—and caused it, as well,” he whispered. “I am so sorry . . . for everything I’ve done. I will forever be remembered as a monster.”
Deva knelt in front of the tree and grasped the tang in his right hand. With relative ease, he slid the blade from the trunk. Then he pressed his hand against the wound and willed healing energy from its palm. Afterward he did the same on the other side. Finally, he drove the Silver Sword straight down into the dirt near the base of the tree, until no part of it was visible.
“If you cannot wield it, neither shall anyone else,” he said. “Torgon, I remember how you tried to help me. Even as you offered your assistance, a part of me was screaming yes! But I didn’t have the courage to scream loud enough.”
Then he collapsed onto his face. “And now . . . when you need my help, I can offer nothing but tears.”
Suddenly Deva lifted his head, his large lips smeared with dirt. In the distance he heard rumbling, and with his superb night vision he could see destriers approaching from the west. The Jivitans, at least some of them, were returning to the battlefield. Though Deva no longer bore the chain, he was concerned that the white horsemen might mistake him for Mala and attack. He didn’t fear for his own welfare, but he wanted to make certain that he harmed no others. He could afford to tarry no longer.
“Goodbye, Torgon,” Deva said, waving the stump of his left arm. “Bhaveyya, te pavattanamÈ anantaramÈÈ sādutaramÈ (May your next existence be better than this).”
Then he stood and sprinted eastward, his white mane flowing behind him like a keel.
49
WHEN THE AGONY of the transformation finally ceased, Torg’s next sensation was panic. Invictus’s demonic spell had encased his flesh inside of living wood, but it had not vanquished the workings of his mind. When Torg tried to breathe, he found himself incapable of inhalation, as if his nostrils and mouth were packed with mud. The resulting hysteria was even worse than he had experienced in the claustrophobic tunnels beneath Mount Asubha. Torg’s screams were as pathetic as they were silent.
When Invictus punched the Silver Sword into the trunk, he actually did Torg a favor. The pain—unlike any Torg had experienced before but nonetheless excruciating—drew his mind away from his dread of suffocation. Now his entire concentration was focused on the blade. Yet even then he was able to hear the sorcerer’s foul words, if only in a psychic sense. Invictus was taking Laylah away, and there was nothing Torg could do about it.
In his mind, Torg wailed. But he was rooted to the ground and unable to move. Long after the sorcerer departed with Laylah as his prisoner, the blade burned inside him. Then without warning, a sudden lack of pain caused Torg to moan. Afterward, the sensation of suffocation returned. He screamed again, knowing he would die, and yet somehow not doing so.
It took Torg what seemed like forever to realize that he no longer needed to breathe to survive. The tree now sustained him, in ways he could sense but not define. Eventually, he was able to beat down the panic and achieve a state of placidity. Only then did the realization that Laylah had been taken from him fully enter his awareness. Torg sobbed silently, but this time his agony was purely emotional.
At that moment, Torg chose to commit suicide, only this time it would not be temporary. Surely his next existence would be better than this.
But when he made the attempt, he discovered that he no longer was capable of achieving Sammaasamaadhi. Invictus’s demonic spell had been brilliantly contrived. Not only was he trapped inside a tree that might continue to live for hundreds of years, he was denied this option of escape. By the time Torg finally passed away, his mind would be long ruined. The sorcerer had won.
When morning came, bright sunlight caressed his leaves and bark, and Torg experienced pleasure for the first time since he had been transformed. He could not see, but he could sense so many things that had never before been part of his awareness. Energy flowed into his body from above and below. The leaves absorbed light, the roots water and nutrients from the soil. It was not so bad being a tree. At least it was a far simpler existence than being a Tugar. He could just stand there—and go about the business of staying alive.
Then he remembered Laylah, and the voiceless screaming resumed.
50
IN THE PHYSICAL sense, it had not been difficult for the Faerie to vanish from the battlefield. Peta had long since told her the exact time and place to make her exit. While the fighting was at its peak, she had blended into the throngs and then galloped northward toward Mahaggata. A pair of Mogols mounted on black wolves had given chase, but quickly veered away when they saw she was too fast to overtake.
In the emotional sense, her decision to abandon Torg had caused the Faerie deep discomfort. The ability to experience passionate sensation was not an attribute of her kind, but when watchers of the Vijjaadharaa spent enough time in the Realm of the Living, they eventually absorbed some of their characteristics.
The Faerie had dwelled among the living of Triken—as Jord and a myriad of other incarnations—for endless millennia, but only in the past five thousand years had she endured such extensive degrees of craving and aversion. Now, as Sakuna the eagle, she perched on a frozen peak in southern Mahaggata, her guilt over abandoning Torg to such a hideous fate making her feel nervous and disoriented. The Faerie had grown to love the wizard—not quite like Laylah loved him, but close enough.
What had happened to Ugga further magnified the Faerie’s guilt. It wasn’t as if she wielded the power to defeat Invictus, but it had been within her means to warn the crossbreed so that he could flee before his forced transformation had occurred. Now he was returned to his former self, and there was little she could do about it. If the bear again drew human blood, she possessed the ability to change him back into human form, but he would become someone other than Ugga, perhaps lacking most of the lovable crossbreed’s best attributes. It was better to leave him in the form of a bear; at least then, some of what had been Ugga would remain intact.
Her only consolation was that Ugga had thrived for thousands of years under the protection of her magic. As Vedana had said in her nasty voice, “Stick to the plan. Be
sides, did you expect him to live forever?”
Seeking solace, the Faerie called to the other Vijjaadharaa. None answered. She was low among her kind—and still young when compared to the elders. Perhaps they were disappointed in her for becoming so emotionally attached. But no, that wasn’t right—even disappointment was a form of emotion. Rather, they failed to comprehend her predicament. Their only concern was for her to succeed in destroying Invictus before he grew so great that he threatened the fabric that bound the universe together.
That fabric, of course, being her kind, the Vijjaadharaa.
“Torgon . . . Ugga . . . I’m sorry!” she screamed. “Please . . . please . . . forgive me.”
Her voice echoed among the peaks.
“Please . . . please . . . forgive me.”
“Please . . . please . . . forgive me.”
IN THE REALM OF the Undead, Peta sat in the darkness and waited until Vedana had exhausted her profane litany. Sparkly remnants of blue and green energy still shimmered on the demon’s grotesque form, creating illumination where none otherwise existed. The ghost-child couldn’t see the colorful light, but she could sense it. To her, it felt like warmth.
Finally the mother of all demons composed herself. It was not until then that she even noticed Peta’s presence. “Taking pleasure in my injuries?” Vedana said petulantly.
“Your injuries? Only you are capable of saying something so absurdly selfish. If not for you, Invictus would already be destroyed. Kusala’s use of the Silver Sword was unforeseen, and it opened a door that would have permitted Invictus’s destruction without the need for all the pain and suffering that otherwise will accompany it. But you slammed that door shut. If I had had the power, I would have stopped you myself.”
“If this, if that. The bottom line is you didn’t have the power to stop me. And one day soon, no one will. Besides, who cares about what might have been? My plan is the only one that we know will work. If Torg and Laylah had tried to kill Invictus and botched it, everything would be doomed—even your little fantasy involving your next life.”
“And what of your next life? There are ramifications to bad behavior. Have you given it no thought?”
“Of course. Why do you think I’m working so hard to ensure that this life will last forever?”
Peta sighed. “I have to go. It stinks in here, and I can’t stand it.”
“Don’t be stupid. There’s no smell in here at all.”
“To you there’s no smell . . . but not to me.”
The Haunted Swamp
51
THE QUEEN SURE was a looker. She was easily the prettiest Nissayan Maynard Tew had ever seen. But for maybe the first time in his life, he found himself interested in just one woman. Dhītar obsessed his every waking moment. He even dreamt about her while he slept.
Now it was midafternoon of the hottest day he could remember in his life. They had left the scary Tugar guys behind yesterday morning and had marched almost fifteen leagues since, skirting the foothills of Mahaggata. Now they were on the western border of Java, and Tew was feeling very uncomfortable. His memories of the march through the forest with Mala’s army were not pleasant. All kinds of spooky monsters lived inside that place. Would they attack now? Then he laughed to himself, surprised by his own feelings, for it wasn’t fear for his own life that worried him; rather it was that he wanted to keep Dhītar safe.
“What’s the queen doing?” Dhītar said, startling him.
“Huh? What? Looks like she’s going deeper into the trees. Why would she do that?”
“That’s what I’m asking you, Maynard.”
She had started calling him Maynard last night. He liked it. “She’s taking a couple of the conjurer guys in with her. You want me to go and get a closer look?”
“Stay where you are and wait,” said the black knight named Palak. “The queen knows what she’s doing and certainly doesn’t need your help.”
“But I . . .”
“Take another step, and I’ll cut your throat.”
“You don’t have to be so mean all the time,” Dhītar said. “He’s as much a part of our company as any of the rest of us.”
Palak sneered. “I’ve never once met a Duccaritan who could be trusted.”
“Well, there’s always a first time,” Tew said. “But don’t worry . . . I’ll stay right where I’m at.”
Palak only grunted.
The queen disappeared for such a long time Tew began to wonder if she might have been kidnapped. Everybody huddled under the shade of the trees, drank lots of water from a nearby spring, and even started to doze. Near dusk, Madiraa and the conjurers returned, but they weren’t alone. Ten score of the spooky Pabbajja guys were with her, each bearing one of those little tridents that glowed in the dark.
“Old advesaries have sheathed their swords,” the queen announced to her company. “Our strength has increased. Perhaps our numbers will grow even further on our way to Avici. Regardless, we will strike a fiercer blow than our enemy would prefer.”
The Pabbajja’s weird eyes wobbled as she spoke. It gave Tew the shivers. But then one came up to him and spoke to him in a feminine voice. “You have chosen wisely,” she said, touching him with her trident. Tew felt a surge of comforting energy flow into his limbs.
“Thank you, dear lady.” Then, stumbling, he added, “You are a lady?”
She sighed. “I have not always looked like this.”
Afterward, Tew felt bad about what he had said, even though he had meant no harm. But then the queen ordered another long march, and the sway of Dhītar’s small but curvaceous butt distracted him. Soon his smile was as broad as a dragon’s.
ON THE SAME evening that Kusala greeted Torg, Madiraa and her rapidly expanding company reached the western bank of the Ogha River. The queen had begun the journey five days before with little more than twelve hundred at her disposal; now her host was three times that large. Farmers and villagers—poorly armed but eager for vengeance—had joined Madiraa, as well as fifty score mounted Svakarans and Bhasurans, who had emerged from the foothills, citing their hatred of the Mogols as reason enough to fight by the queen’s side. Renowned as archers, these warriors were almost as formidable as her black knights, and their horses were clever and courageous. Each day, Madiraa’s confidence grew. Now she led a force that could do considerable damage, if properly commanded.
Crossing the Ogha was never a simple task, especially for large numbers, but there were those among them who had spent most of their lives on the banks of the greatest river in the world and knew the locations of the few bridges that spanned it. Madiraa was led to a fishing village only thirty leagues south of Avici. Less than a year ago, the village had been home to more than one thousand and also had been one of the main stopping points for those making the long journey from Senasana to Kamupadana. Several inns anchored a sprawl of wooden buildings that extended for a quarter-mile north and south along the western bank. Kaalika, it was named, but it was active no longer. If any still lived there, they dared not show themselves.
Madiraa called Indajaala and Commander Palak to her side. “We shall rest here tonight. As fast as we’ve traveled thus far, we’ve earned a good sleep. Tell the black knights to search the village for provisions—and comfortable beds.”
Several villagers, some of whom had once lived in Kaalika, proudly announced that they knew where to find nets that could snare enough fish for a feast.
“Make it so,” Madiraa proclaimed. “And tonight, we shall dare open fires.”
“That will not be necessary,” one of the villagers said. “There are cook stoves aplenty within the inns.”
They spent that night in comfort, with bellies full of fish stew and mulled wine. The following morning, as they were preparing to set forth again, more than a thousand farmers and fishermen, including elderly and children, approached from the south.
Apparently, news was spreading. Madiraa was pleased to welcome anyone who could fight, but she was in no po
sition to provide protection for the weak, nor could she afford to leave any of her current force behind to assume that role. After a good deal of pleading and bargaining that took most of the morning, two hundred of the fittest men and women agreed to march with Madiraa, their hatred of Mogols driving their decision. Under Invictus’s protection, the dreaded Mahaggatan warriors had raided hundreds of villages up and down the Ogha, raping, kidnapping, and murdering.
“As long as this involves killing anyone who has sided with the sorcerer, then we’re with you, missus,” one of the new recruits said to Madiraa.
Palak stomped forward. “Address the queen as her highness.”
But Madiraa only smiled. “It’s all right, commander. Anyone willing to risk his life for my cause has my permission to call me missus anytime he pleases.” Then she nodded at the man. “Just be sure that enough able men and women remain to protect those among you less equipped to fight.”
Now they numbered almost four thousand, though less than half bore weapons of any consequence. A few of the villagers wore rusted hauberks or leather jerkins that had seen better days, and some carried notched swords or heavy axes with fan-shaped blades. How this ragtag bunch would fare against armored golden soldiers, even if the soldiers did not transform, wasn’t promising. At least her black knights and the mounted Bhasurans and Svakarans were deadly fighters—and the conjurers wielded great power.
As it turned out, the village—though abandoned—was not without booty. They found flour, nuts, dried fruit, and several barrels of wine, the last of which they emptied into goatskins. They would take only what they could carry on their backs.
This pleased Madiraa. “We’re actually starting to resemble an army,” she said to Palak with a touch of sarcasm. “If we grow any larger, Avici will tremble at our feet.”